Partly below minus 40 degrees: Extreme cold is keeping Sweden on tenterhooks

A high pressure area is causing extreme cold in northern Sweden. Most recently, temperatures below minus 40 degrees were measured there – a challenge even for the Swedes.

Minus 30 degrees is not necessarily unusual in the north of Sweden in January. But the current cold snap is pushing even winter-hardened Swedes to their limits. Also Matilda Eneby from Jokkmokk, a good 1,000 kilometers north of Stockholm.

“The coldest I’ve ever experienced was minus 38, but last night it was minus 42.5 degrees,” she says. Eneby asked the school, but there shouldn’t be any cold-free days. “You certainly don’t see as many people outside as usual, but other than that everything goes as usual here.”

High pressure area from Sweden to Russia

Temperatures below minus 40 degrees were measured in two other places. The reason: a high pressure area over northern Sweden, Finland and parts of Russia.

Reindeer herder Erik Sarri is used to working outside in the cold, but like many people, he underestimated the extreme cold. In the morning he was on his way to the mountains to see the reindeer on his scooter. “But it was too cold. If something were to happen out there, you’d quickly cool down and have problems,” he says. “You can really feel the extreme cold. If you take off your gloves for a moment, you immediately lose feeling in your fingers.”

Ski lifts and trains are at a standstill

Victor Gustavson from Sorsele, about 250 kilometers further south, also had to close his ski lift due to the weather. “It’s currently minus 27 degrees here and it’s getting colder by the hour,” says the ski lift operator. “We stop operations from minus 22 for safety reasons. In the event of an accident, it can take a while for help to arrive and of course we don’t want to risk any frost damage.”

But it’s not just the ski lifts that are at a standstill for safety reasons, trains are too. The Swedish Railways has completely stopped train services from Umeå, a good seven and a half hours’ drive north of Stockholm.

If the temperature drops below minus 30, this will not least affect the contact lines, which are made of a type of steel alloy, explains Bengt Olsson from the transport authority. “They become brittle and there is a risk that they will break when a train comes. We don’t want to expose passengers to that risk.”

Cold affects the entire body

The official cold record was measured in Sweden in 1966: minus 52.6 degrees. Temperatures that can have health consequences, says Albin Stjernbrandt from Norrland University Hospital.

“At minus 30 degrees or colder, the whole body is affected. Breathing becomes labored, you have to cough, blood pressure increases and the entire circulatory system is put under strain,” explains the senior doctor. “We are simply less efficient. And then of course there is the risk of frost damage.”

The best protection against this: stay indoors. If you still have to go out, you should do so for as short a time as possible in the coming days, as the extreme cold in the north of Sweden is expected to last until the weekend.